


a little unsteady

by rayfelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 18:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9561752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: The bell rings echo across the grounds and his graduation passes. The same evening Regulus wears the silver mask of a Death Eater and walks the streets of London, his wand a tool for murder and not miracles.He’s seventeen. The choice was made for him at fifteen.





	

Regulus sits on the unyielding mattress of his bed and tries to swallow down the panic that rubs his throat raw. The house is quiet. The ticking of the clock is the same as a deafening gurgle of water in the ears of a drowning man. Somewhere in the layers of magic and dark hallways the fifteen year old can still make out the faded shape of Sirius’ calming laughter.

Sirius has been gone for a year now. Even more than that in spirit and heart.

The clock keeps on ticking. Regulus breathes in the dust and stands up; only the swish of his robe breaks the silence. His parents, they support his decision ( _not his decision, nothing in his life was his_ ) to bend his knee for the Dark Lord. They pushed him for this, just as they had pushed him for the perfect image of a son and a descendant.

But where, in all of this, was his own will?

Dead. Burned when Regulus was five and his father had told him that Blacks don’t cry, Blacks don’t show weakness, Blacks rule without emotion and step on the bones and bleeding wounds of their enemies.

The door to his room creaks open and Wallburga stares at him with eyes as cold as inferi. She wrinkles her nose at his paleness, his hair grown too long. “It’s time.” She says instead of giving name to her disappointment and her hatred. “Make us _proud_.” It’s a threat, rather than a wish.

Regulus says nothing. His throat still burns like acid and something _breaks_.

…

The Dark Lord doesn’t _touch_.

No, the Dark Lord stands before them ( _children of servants, children that simply follow orders, nothing but children_ ) and _looks_. The man is as white as snow, with eyes the shade of rubies thrown in wild flames. Regulus can see scales rippling along the Dark Lord’s skin, when the light plays hide and seek in the shadowed room.

“You are all here because you have chosen to serve the _right_ cause. The _just_ cause.” Voldemort slides his fingers along the white wood of his wand, eyes unblinking as he looks over those that kneel before him. “I applaud you for being smart enough to see the _truth_ , to see past the _idiocy_ spread by the Ministry.”

The Dark Lord smiles and it’s a frightening thing. A dangerous thing. Regulus closes his eyes and evens his breathing, thinks only of the cold that seeps into his knees and travels through his blood.

At the end of the evening there is a Mark burned on his left arm. Inky black and shivering with magic and pain of the oath, the tattoo sinks its fangs into his flesh and his magic. It ties him to the Dark Lord with something more than just a promise to follow.

Regulus bleeds, but his face stays a mask of stone and marble. He was a Black and Blacks don’t show emotion. Blacks show nothing at all, not even humanity, even as they break beneath it all.

…

Neither of Regulus’ parents touches the Death Eater mark. They look at it with pleased sort of smile, admit to their son’s usefulness and the way he lives _correctly_ and _rightly_. There is an undertone, of course there is, of the unsaid accusations towards Sirius. It is always Sirius, one way or another.

Later Regulus sits on his bed again, drowns in his mind and counts down the seconds towards the end. His arm is still in pain, the tattoo still moves as if alive and it’s hard to breathe. His duty as a son, his duty as a friend, his duty as a pureblood – all of this meant nothing to him, in the end.

What were his ideals and his own truth worth, when he needs to give up so much for them? His life, his will, his freedom. And now his magic is bound to another man’s core, his skin marked to show his alliance. What can Slytherin cunning do now, when there was no way to escape what had been done? It is a dementor’s kiss waiting to happen; it is judgment like no other if ( _when_ ) the war ends not in their favor.

A suicide pact. Signed by his hand, as his mother ordered him to.

Kreacher grabs onto the perfectly ironed strands of Regulus’ jacket and does not let go. There is nothing to be said, not anymore. All has been done, too late for regrets.

“Sorry, Kreacher. It looks like I will not be eating today as well.” Regulus curls his fingers into a fist and tilts his head just slightly to one side. The snake wiggles its tongue over his veins. “Although, if you would, bring me some warm milk.”

“Or course, Master Regulus.” The old elf croaks with relief and is gone during the time it takes to blink.

…

Back at Hogwarts Regulus is now one of the pack, one of the upper echelon once again. Severus quietly passes him potions to relieve the _itch_ that settles over the mark. They now have one more thing in common to speak about, to make plans about.

Barty clutches onto his forearm with an iron grip and refuses to speak of the cold Christmas night. His Ravenclaw blue only serves to emphasize the trembles that shake the teenager’s frame and the light dusting of freckles upon his cheeks.

They had kneeled together, side by side, Barty and Regulus. Their friendship is stronger than the previous leers and comments of both houses, of the blood that keeps their hearts beating. But will it be strong enough for the front lines of the Dark Lord’s war?

“Hey there, _little brother_.” Sirius is an arrogant man now, his beauty a reflection of what once served as a weapon to their family. “So, how’s it hanging? Still playing the perfect little lap dog for dear mummy and daddy?” It’s a sneer not a smile on Sirius’ lips, and it’s pride that speaks, not care and worry. That was long since left behind, walled in the old wood of their house.

Regulus lifts his head, raises his chin. He was the pureblood heir, the _perfect_ son. And he will play this role well. “I have nothing to say to a traitor.” The words of his father, said with the same intonation of Wallburga’s lashes. A perfect copy. Nothing more than that.

Sirius’s eyes narrow and his lips curl to reveal his teeth. “I rather be a traitor and stand by what I believe, than a brainwashed baby _Death Eater_ in the making.” Then he leaves, deigning not to even give one last look at his brother.

That acid once again bubbles up along Regulus’ throat, burns painful welts inside of him. “I’m not brave. I’ve never _been_ brave.” Never has he been this weak and tired, either.

…

Regulus does not go to Sirius’ graduation.

Two years later it’s Lily and James Potter, not his brother, who stand before Regulus. The diploma in his hands seems meaningless in the face of war. His parents excuses for why they won’t step foot in Hogwarts had been hollow.

He’s still alone, even when he has done everything that has been asked of him.

“We came in Sirius’ place. He wanted to be here, but… Well, you know him.” Lily smiles and it’s warm. She smiles and it’s for Regulus. She’s like a splash of joy and color in the middle of his colorless world. Too bright.

Regulus feels his mark pulse. “Don’t. He doesn’t want to be here.” _See me_ stays unsaid. He’s Slytherin and he masks what he doesn’t want to be seen. He’s a coward, still. There is too much between him and Sirius now to make it better with just this little.

James holds his wife’s hand tighter. There’s pity and sadness in the kind hazel eyes there, as if he was sorry for what had become of the Black brothers. It’s too late for _that_ as well. “ _Please_ , Regulus.” James breathes instead, “He just didn’t want to meet your parents.”

“He had nothing to worry about then, as you see.” Regulus laughs and it’s hollow, harsh. “There’s no on here for me, in the end. Not worth it.” He wants to ask for someone to find him worthy of _anything_ for once. But it was always, in the end, Sirius that shone the brightest and was to be something.

Gryffindor braveness. Slytherin cunning.

Lily reaches out as if she wishes to touch and make it better. Regulus flinches away from her fingers, her misplaced kindness. His arm flares in pain, his chest even more so. “ _Don’t_. I don’t need your kindness, or your _pity_. There is no place for that during war.”

The bell rings echo across the grounds and his graduation passes. The same evening Regulus wears the silver mask of a Death Eater and walks the streets of London, his wand a tool for murder and not miracles.

He’s seventeen. The choice was made for him at fifteen.

…

There is a dead woman by Regulus’ feet. Her hair a halo of blond, soaking into the mud, her light green eyes glassy as they reflect the moon and stars of up above. It’s not the first victim of his wand and neither will it be the last, but Regulus still cries behind his porcelain mask. Whichever one it may be.

Her belly is ( _was_ ) round with a child. That’s two lives he has extinguished. That’s two more sins to add for his road to perdition.

The Dark Mark is a beacon of killing curse green in the sky. The screams just make it all that more powerful. There is fire, somewhere further away. There are the cracks of more magicals arriving.

Regulus stands still as curses and hexes fly by him. The Death Eaters don’t play children games anymore, they aim and cast to kill and to torture. The Order seeks an impossible victory with no life wasted on the battlefields. The dementors are the reapers of those that follow the Dark Lord.

Sirius’ spell shatters Regulus’ mask. White shards rain over the dead woman; blood slowly slides down across the bridge of his nose. The tears are easy to see, his smile a broken reflection in the eyes of his brother. “You were right, you know.” Regulus laughs in the face of tortured realization. “I really am no good.”

“How could you _do this_? How---! Do you feel _nothing_?” Sirius isn’t yelling. His voice is barely a whisper above the chaos and the death sweeping past these streets. “I thought you were better than this. But no, you’re just like the rest of them.”

Regulus breathes slowly, raises his wand to place against his neck, where his pulse races like wild horses. “I wish I was brave. Maybe then I wouldn’t have had to become what I am now. Not even this makes her acknowledge me. How _naïve_ I am.”

There is an explosion, somewhere. A curse that hits Regulus in the back and he stumbles, falls over the woman he had killed. Sirius’s face is an emotion with no name and a painful revelation. Mud seeps into Regulus’ very being, mixes together with the acid that has slowly murdered him since eleven.

His back burns even more so.

A coward he is, always and forever more. “I flee.” He whispers and the portkey activates, hot as coals around his wrist.

…

Bellatrix cradles the cup in her arms as if it were a child. Lucius carries the small diary on a pillow made of soft feathers. From Regulus the Dark Lord asks only to borrow Kreacher.

Barty no longer looks like the nervous child he was during the years spent in Hogwarts. There is the same kind of insanity that Bellatrix does not shy away hidden deep into his gaze. Severus, though, slides through the shadows as if the hellhounds are on his heels.

Kreacher comes back almost dead and writhing in agony. But the old elf knows secrets now, secrets that were supposed to die with him in the underground cave. The elf is loyal only to the Blacks, even more so to Master Regulus, who is the kindest and best master there is to have.

Horcruxes. Dark and disgusting soul magic, _immortality_.

“Do you think me brave, Kreacher?” Regulus traces the spines of the old books of Black library with a gentleness he shows to nothing and no one else. “Or simply foolish, for my lack of belief for the Dark Lord’s utopia?”

The old elf wrings his hands in the pale grey of his towel, flops his ears in confusion. “Kreacher thinks Master Regulus is a good master.” The elf croaks in the end. It’s not an answer and it’s not what Regulus _needs_ to hear.

Regulus smiles at the elf either way. Loyalty is something that means more than assurance, at times. “Thank you, Kreacher. You are most kind.”

…

Severus is leaning over his cauldron, face hidden in the fumes that bundle out of it in lazy waves. The man’s brows are furrowed in concentration, eyes intent on every bubble that rises and pops. Ingredients are laid out, already cut into pieces, on the table, close enough to reach and far enough to not be in the way.

“You had something you wanted to ask me?” Severus talks quietly, as always. The words a drawl and hiss when they come out of the potion master’s mouth. “I don’t have _all_ day.”

Regulus stands facing the shelves full of ingredients. This is also a form of running away. “What do you think of this war? About the rumors concerning our Lord?” There have been many of those, concerning blood and status.

Now, Regulus knows well who he had bowed for. He knows that their Lord is the very same thing they strive to destroy.

There is silence and then Regulus can feel Severus gazing at his back, black eyes narrowed as if the man can read his mind without the need of locked gazes. “I think that rumors _should not_ be trusted. I _also_ think that you, Regulus, are playing a dangerous game asking questions that should not be asked.”

“Perhaps the Black insanity is catching up, then.” Regulus turns around and twists his lips into a mockery of a smile. “But you are wavering as well, I can tell.” It’s not a lie. It is, however, blackmail most obvious. Mother would be _disgusted_.

Severus looks away and adds a cut root to his potion. “The Dark Lord has changed. You never were truly loyal.” He stirs the potion that brews on slow and lazy fire. There is no accusation, just a statement of facts that those close to Regulus can pick out.

“Do you think me foolish, then, for questioning my decisions only now?” Regulus doesn’t turn away this time. Severus was one friend that would never soften the cold hard truth.

“I think you’re a fool for calling that decision _yours_.” Severus answers instead, with emotionless finality of this discussion. His eyes don’t leave the potion, but the wand held in his fingers does not waver as it swings through the air as conductor’s baton.

This time Regulus laughs something more real, but bitter and pathetic in its core. “Ah, that I cannot deny.”

…

Regulus stands in front of the church doors with both his arms bared - the mark a beacon instead of a simple target on his pale skin. The winds howl and tear through the last days of summer. Children laugh far away and the sound seems unreal, a mirage created with the unnatural calmness that the muggle town is drawn into.

“Never thought you were religious.” Sirius’s voice is both a surprise and, at the same time, a curse that Regulus has expected. “Or this stupid.”

Regulus swallows and turns ever so slightly to look at this brother that no longer was a brother. He looks at the man, who once, long ago, would whisper made-up stories just to make the tears stop. There was so much to hate Sirius for (a _nd he did, oh, how he hated_ ), but a bit of that childhood love is still there. It is rooted in his heart, in his useless and empty heart.

“I am nothing.” Regulus breathes and turns away. The fake locket in his pocket is a heavy weight, too heavy for a fake. “I always _was_ nothing.” But this one time he will mold his own self. This one time he will be selfish at least, the first and last time before it ends.

Sirius swallows too loudly, moves too loudly. Everything is too loud, too alive.

But a choice has been made. This time it is his own.

Regulus turns around fully and smiles, wide and with his teeth showing. “You’re a _fool_ brother. Not everyone can be as reckless as you. I don’t have friends, not like yours, who could have taken me in. I have nothing and I _am_ nothing. But today, I will become _something_.” There is life in his lungs, life coursing through every nerve and fiber of his body.

Adrenalin. Courage. _Excitement_.

Sirius opens his mouth to speak, confusion once again written clearly over every bruise and scratch scattered on this face, a storm that muddles his light grey eyes. But Regulus is tired of expectations and being the one that always bears the brunt of the questions and the accusations.

This was good enough for a goodbye and a suicide note.

“Farewell, my brother.”

…

Regulus takes the last breaths he can in a wheeze, laughs in hysteria he has never felt before. Kreacher has gone back home, together with the locket they have stolen from the Dark Lord. Who would have thought that the useless second son, the backup son, the coward and the spineless lapdog would do what no one else had the courage to?

A joke, all of this.

The cold and clammy hand of an inferi wraps around his ankle and _pulls_. Regulus relaxes into the movement. He still feels alive and powerful, like everything has settled into place. There is pain and agony, there is the relief and the amusement mixing and turning into something _else_ inside of him.

He has been brave. He has been successful!

Regulus dies with laugher on his lips and no more acid burning him from the inside. Regulus dies a hero. And no one ever finds out ( _but someone will, with time_ ), but that’s all right. Regulus never did it for them.

No, this was all for the sake of setting himself free.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore Regulus. He deserved better.


End file.
